Lisbon, June 18, 2026 (Lusa) - The chair of Portugal's state-owned Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD) bank said on Thursday that 2025 was likely to have been the last year in which the state-owned bank posted higher profits than Revolut, the digital bank that operates worldwide.

“2025 was perhaps the last year that CGD made more profit than Revolut; it will never happen again,” said Paulo Macedo at a lunch debate organised by the Christian Association of Entrepreneurs and Managers (ACEGE) in Lisbon, where he was a speaker.

Macedo praised the work CGD has been doing and said that this month the bank is likely to lend €700 million in mortgages, a figure he considered very significant.

However, the manager believes that it is when things are “going well” in a company that changes must be made; one must remain restless in order to remain a leader and not be overtaken by competitors.

Paulo Macedo emphasised that CGD’s role is to generate a return on the capital invested by the state, using taxpayers’ money, and that it therefore has social obligations (such as maintaining a nationwide branch network), but it is not its role to “provide the loans that others do not want” nor to “generate meagre profits”.

“If CGD were to make a profit of €200 million, that would mean a return of less than 2%, and it would be better to invest in savings certificates,” he said, referring to the €11 billion invested in the state-owned bank.

In 2025, CGD posted record profits of €1.9 billion.

In February, when presenting these results, Macedo said that the bank's high 2025 profits would be difficult to replicate, but that he expected to maintain profits in excess of €1 billion.

Nevertheless, the chief executive (and former Minister of Health in the PSD/CDS-PP government) stated that he expects CGD to maintain “substantial results” in the coming years.

IM/ADB // ADB.

Lusa